Hepatitis B virus (HBV)
infection is the most prominent risk factor for developing
hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which can increase the incidence of HCC by more than 100 times. Accumulated evidence has revealed that non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) play a regulatory role in various
tumors through the
long non-coding RNA (
lncRNA)-
microRNA (
miRNA)-
mRNA regulation axis. However, the involvement of the ncRNA regulatory network in the progression of HBV
infection-induced HCC remains elusive. In the current work, five
tumor samples from patients with
hepatitis B surface antigen (
HBsAg)-positive HCC and three
tumor samples from patients with
HBsAg-negative HCC were collected for whole-transcriptome sequencing. Between the two groups, 841 lncRNAs, 54
miRNAs, and 1118 mRNAs were identified to be differentially expressed (DE). The Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses indicated that DE genes were mainly involved in
cancer-related pathways, including Wnt and MAPK signaling pathways. The Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) analysis further validated the selected DE mRNAs. The DE
lncRNA-
miRNA-
mRNA network was built to explore the effect of HBV
infection on the regulation of ncRNAs in HCC. These findings provide novel insights into the role of HBV
infection in the progression of HCC.